by Alan Ryker
Dream. It’s all a dream.
I take the picture from the wall. Printed out, not compressed to fit in a text message, it’s better quality than the version I have, but the focus is terrible. The lighting is strange, reflecting harshly off her pale skin and leaving deep shadows, creating features in her face which were never there before, showing the skull beneath the flesh, showing the wrecked life.
Her eyes are so vacant.
Looking back at the wall, I see the arrows carved into the walls and into the floor, leaving fresh, curled strands of plaster and wood.
They point to the closed door at the end of the hall.
The acrid smell. Smoke.
I should go home. I should forget about what’s behind that door and live this amazing second chance I’ve gotten. I shouldn’t be trying to wake up from this dream.
I grab the doorknob.
I don’t know where home is, but I’m pretty sure it’s not back at my condo. It might be gone. It might be somewhere between my two worlds, some third possibility. But there’s no point trying to go back. I know that now.
I go forward. The door resists, then opens with a strange, thready rasp, and the smell hits me, the full smell, not just what leaked out.
It’s the hospital. It’s me, beneath the heat lamps, begging to be put under, begging for the loss of consciousness even if it comes by way of death.
The memories hit so hard they loosen my knees and I brace myself in the doorway, my hand finding the strips of duct tape that had sealed in most of the smell. I breathe through my mouth, but then I can taste it.
It’s a losing battle. I give in, get it over with, and puke my guts out.
When the heaving slows, I breathe and start wretching again, this time trying to bring up organs from even deeper in my abdomen.
When my body gives up on finding anything else to vomit, I stand up straight on my shaking legs and aim my puny phone light at the heap in the center of the room.
On an asbestos fire blanket lies a burnt corpse. Its flesh is blackened beyond what mine was, much of the burning going down into the muscle and even the bone. It’s impossible to tell if it was man or woman without digging through the char, the thought of which tightens the noose around my guts.
I look away. The walls in this room should have been white as in the rest of the house, but they’re mottled black and gray. This person burned right here. A plastic bottle of lighter fluid and a phone lay in the corner.
I don’t get it. I look back at the body, trying to discover what it means. It’s staring up at the ceiling, screaming, staring with empty sockets. I follow it’s gaze, and there I find my answer, written on the ceiling.
IS THIS WHAT YOU WANT?
This was all a message, to scare me off the trail of Ouroboros. The Dorsets were right. These are not people you fuck with. These are not people you even ask about. These are the sort of people you pretend don’t exist. Not just because to do otherwise will leave you like this poor soul, but because to acknowledge that this is a reality reveals the entire world built on the social contract to be a massive inverted pyramid balanced precariously on a needle tip, ready to topple, ready to send us screeching and slavering back to our true natures as the most brutal animals to have ever skulked through the shadows.
I’ve seen enough. I skirt the edge of the room and grab and pocket the cell phone. But turning to leave, I notice again the duct tape. I hadn’t fully processed its significance with all of my senses being assailed.
The door had been taped shut from the inside.
Turning back, I scan the room. There’s a window, but it’s been boarded over from the inside as well as the outside. There’s no way a person could have lit this corpse on fire and then left the room. I look up at the ceiling and down at the floor, but I know this is true. There’s no way out except for through the door that was sealed from the inside.
I had hoped that this person had already been dead when he’d burned. I had hoped that he’d died easily, shot in the head, maybe. That hadn’t been the case. This person burned alive.
Because this person set himself on fire.
* * *
Sitting in my car, I try to pull my thoughts together. I can’t. They spin in my head, a maelstrom of confused images and fatalistic impulses which I can’t allow to settle or they’ll be the end of me. I have to focus on moving forward. Instead of pulling my thoughts together, I shove them back, down, close a door on them. I hear them pounding. They’ll break through eventually.
I take the phone out of my pocket and begin to flip through the menus. Following a hunch, I check the camera image files first.
It contains a full set of images of Madison, of which the print out was only one. I flip through them slowly. My lungs want to clamp shut just beneath my collarbones, but I stare. The monsters—my monsters—bang on the cellar door, wanting out. I stay pragmatic, looking for clues.
They reveal nothing to me that the first photo didn’t. I can’t tell where she is. I notice nothing that will do so. They confirm, though, that Madison is in terrible shape, that I need to find her soon, because that slope the Dorsets talked about…She doesn’t have much farther to slide. That pitfall…She’s going to hit bottom soon.
The house had been prepared just for me. Whoever contacted the Dorsets had set the scene for me, but why? As a warning? In that way, it should have been effective. If I didn’t have this set of alternate memories, the charred corpse would seem like a horrific threat, a display of what would happen to me if I didn’t back off. But it wasn’t just a glimpse into my potential future, it was a recreation of my alternate past.
IS THIS WHAT YOU WANT?
Once again, that could be a threat, or it could be a real question. Is that what I want? Do I want to return to the world where Madison didn’t make this deal with the devil that saved me? Is she worth it?
But if someone is asking that question, it means that someone else has the same memories I do. They know what should have happened, how things should have turned out.
The full import of that idea hits me. No one else remembers. Not Janet. Not my or Madison’s parents. Not the doctors at the burn unit. I was alone in this, but if this was more than a threat, then someone else remembers. Someone tied to Madison.
The connection between Madison’s two disappearances and these two worlds seemed tenuous, but now I know its connected. Somehow, she saved me and damned herself in the process. Somehow, it’s connected to this gang or cult or whatever is symbolized by the mark of Ouroboros.
They’re giving me a chance to turn back. I don’t know why. Why set up a display like that? If I’m annoying them, they’ve shown that they could have easily killed me instead.
I turn on the phone I picked up from the floor. Clicking around, I find the system menu. It’s number is the same as the one the Dorsets gave me. Like I thought, a dead end.
I flip through the phone, trying to find a thread leading into this mysterious network.
The phone has either been wiped entirely clean, or, as I suspect, was purchased just for this purpose. A pay-as-you-go burner with no links back to the buyer. There are no texts. No contacts. There is one number in the call history. Whoever helped set this up. I dial it, listen to the dial tone. No one picks up, and there’s no voicemail. The phone on the other end of the call is probably in a trashcan somewhere.
For a moment I wonder why they bothered leaving it. Every aspect of that scene was orchestrated, so why leave something that looked like a lead but turned out to be a dead end?
To give me hope, then take it away. They sent what seemed like information to the Dorsets to give to me, and they wanted me to know for certain that this thread had been cut.
I thought about going back to the Dorsets and getting their contact out of them, but if this thread had been severed, I wouldn’t be surprised to find that even if I could get the number out of them—something that would probably require violence—it would lead nowhere.
I put t
hat away as a possibility for later.
The Dorsets had recognized the symbol as soon as I described it, though they hadn’t known it by its mythological name. They said that when you came across something with the mark, a person, a package, a building, that you pretended it didn’t exist.
Out there, in the city, this symbol was placed in the open. It didn’t need to be hidden because it didn’t mean anything to most people, and the people who it did mean something to were too frightened to talk about it. The Serpent sat hidden in plain view.
But now I know. Now my understanding of the city I live in has changed. It was the difference between staring into darkness while in light, and staring into darkness when you already stood in the shadow. My eyes were previously adjusted to the sunshine, and the shadows were solid. Now I knew darkness, now my mind was dilated, and I could see the different shades of horror. I could see the definite gradation between pretenders like the Dorset brothers and whoever could inspire a man to burn himself alive.
I look up from the phone, out of my car. On my side of the street is a terrible neighborhood. On the other is the Burnout, a place which I hesitate to even call a neighborhood. It’s the necrotic core of the city. Without streetlights, without lights spilling from windows, it’s completely dark. But now I can see movement in the shadows.
My door flies open behind me, I tilt back into the open space, because my elbow was rested against the inside of the door, and something small and hard is pressed against the back of my head.
“Get out of the car, motherfucker.”
I turn to face a teenager holding a small revolver. He’s smiling. His friend smiles over his shoulder. They’re giddy.
I spin my long legs out of the car.
The kid jumps back a step, colliding with his friend, causing them both to stagger, making the gun jerk and dance. I watch it like a cobra I’m trying to hypnotize into not biting.
“Slow, motherfucker!” he shouts.
“Slow,” I say, standing up, unfurling myself until I’m looming half a foot over the tallest of the two.
“We weren’t sure at first,” he says, “but you’re in the wrong part of town.”
I nod. I should be terrified, but everything is different since my memories doubled, ever since I burned.
I reach for my wallet.
He jerks the nasty little pistol at me, gripping it in shaking hands. “Fuck you doing?”
“My wallet. I assumed you wanted it.”
He relaxes a bit. “You know what assuming does, right?”
“So you don’t want it?”
“Yes I want it, motherfucker. Don’t get smart.” Then over his shoulder. “Listen to how this faggot talks. Jesus Christ.”
His friend laughs. He’s a happy guy.
I take my wallet from my pocket—slowly, slowly motherfucker—and hand it over. The one without the pistol snatches it, happily counting the decent wad I was carrying.
“How’s it look?” Mr. Gun says.
“Good. Fucker’s loaded. You don’t need all this, do you? This ain’t shit to you.”
“Then why’s he driving an Acura? Poor man’s Lexus.”
That actually stings. I’ve thought that myself and looked forward to the day when I can afford a real luxury car.
The happy bastard laughs, shoves the cash in his pocket, drops my wallet to the concrete.
“The phone,” little Mr. Gun says, flicking his eyes to my left hand. I hadn’t even realized I was still holding the phone from the house.
My hand moves automatically to hand it to him. My brain is already set to give him whatever he wants, because I know I’m not going to get out of this with anything of value still in my possession. I’m already wondering if any of the pay phones in any of the corner stores I passed are working.
But then I stop.
“This isn’t my phone. Just a burner. Here,” I say, jamming my free hand into my pocket, gaining another spasm of his arms as I get my phone free and shove it at him. “This is my phone. It’s much better.”
He takes it, pockets it. “I want that one, too.”
“You can have my car. The keys are already in the ignition.” I start to back away, going in the direction they came from, the direction I vaguely know, having come that way myself.
“I know I can have the car, asshole! I want the fucking phone.”
The happy one, his eyes are wide, his smile is a frozen grimace.
I put the phone in my pocket. I turn and walk away. I won’t give up this phone. The pictures…And it might have some information on it that I haven’t found yet.
“What the fuck?” little Mr. Gun says. Then I hear the happy one muttering. I can’t tell what he’s saying, but he’s the devil on Mr. Gun’s left shoulder. I know this.
My face hits the sidewalk. A sledgehammer slams into my back. There’s a loud crack. Another. I think in that order. I think maybe.
Fuck. I try to push myself up. I can’t get to my hands and knees. I can’t even move my arms.
There’s a tug at my hand.
“Dumbass,” Mr. Gun says. Then the slap of feet running away.
“Hey! Hey you little assholes!”
It’s what I’m thinking, but the words didn’t come from my lips. They came from across the street. I can’t see from whom. I can hear his footsteps getting closer. He’s running. But I can’t see him. The night is dark and getting darker.
“Shit. Shit.” He’s right beside me. He might be touching me.
“He’s dying. Cody. That’s right. Some punks shot him. Yes, tell him. Tell him now.”
Everything is going numb. My ears buzz, so loud, but then the sound recedes.
“I’m standing right beside him. He has two bullet holes in his back, one I think in his spine. He’s fucked.”
7
I start my car. I’m about to pull away when the memories hit me, slam into my brain under pressure, threatening to split my skull.
I reach out with both hands, catch myself as if I’m falling, start to hyperventilate.
It’s happened again.
I look at the two overlapping sets of memories. In one, two kids hold me up and shoot me because I stupidly refuse to hand over this phone. In the other, the real set, the set of memories that lead to this moment, I sat examining the phone and my situation in peace.
I look in my rear view mirror. The kids are standing there at the end of the block, still looking in my direction, but behind them stands a man.
I’d bet anything that if I spoke to that man, he’d sound like—
The phone from the house had one call in the call history, I click to it and call it. Once it starts ringing, I look up to the rear view.
The man takes a phone from his pocket, looks at it, looks at my car.
I get out. He’s half a block away.
From this distance we stand staring at each other. It’s a long moment. My moments right now are strange anyway, pulsing, trying to make room for memories that shouldn’t be there.
I was dying. Goddamn.
The man turns and runs. I run after. The kids whip around, startled at his movement, then look back to see me charging straight at them.
The one has a gun. It’s not in his hands, but I know he has it because he shot me with it. Twice. He jumps to the side and watches with wide eyes.
I get to the end of the block just in time to see the man run into the front door of a house. A minute later I’m bounding up the couple of porch steps and through the still-open front door. A woman and her kids stand in the living room, staring toward the back of the house. The television is way too loud, so that they don’t seem to notice me until I’ve already run past them in the direction they’re gawking.
“Hey!” the woman shouts, but I’m already in the kitchen. Three long, booming strides and I’m out the open back door.
I don’t know where the man has gone, but then I look to the pit bull barking at the far side of the yard.
Fuck.
; It hasn’t noticed me yet. Beyond it there’s just enough moonlight for me to make out the man as he slows and turns towards me, trotting backwards for a few steps as he watches to see if I’ll give up the chase, which sets the dog off in a barking frenzy.
I head straight for the dog, making as little noise as possible on the hard-packed, mostly bare earth. At the last moment it hears me over its own barking and spins. I hurdle the fence, and its teeth rake the heel of my trailing shoe.
I flip the dog off, one hand extended out behind me, as I continue the chase. I’m gaining. The man isn’t as fast as me, and is having a harder time with the opposite fence.
Then I’m flying, my upper body continuing at the same speed, my legs unable to swing forward to catch it, trapped instead on some large, plastic object hidden by the darkness and my focus on the opposite side of the yard.
I hit the ground hard. I take some of the impact with my hands and elbows, but I was moving really fast. The sprint already had me struggling for air, and for a moment my body panics as it can’t draw in the oxygen it desperately wants.
Across the yard, the man makes it over the fence, then looks back. It’s too dark to make out his expression, but I imagine it’s confused as he scans the yard for signs of me and finds none. He trots off, not moving quite as quickly as before.
Slowing my frantic, shallow inhalations, I get control of my breathing and push up to my feet. My shins are scraped and bruised, and the palms of my hands burn. I don’t vault this fence with as much gusto as I vaulted the other, though if a pit bull were nipping at my heels I could probably find a little more enthusiasm.
Away from the Burnout, the intermittent street lamps provide enough light that I can now see the man clearly again. He lopes slowly along until he looks back over his shoulder and sees me. Frustration fills his face for a moment before he turns and runs, this time straight up to a pack of young men loitering outside a huge apartment building.